S/PLI/T: Tell us about the process of making the videos in this exhibition.Rives Wiley: My process for my videos is very much the same process that I use for my paintings. I start with a digitally altered everyday object or situation, and then create a world to support it. From there, I bring the digital into a tangible form. For example, the piece “Stalking a Stocking Photo of a Candlelit Picnic” is representational of a stock photo. As you can see in the video, I’ve translated the translucent watermarks found on stock photos into lines of scotch tape, transporting the watermarks from the digital to reality.

S/: You often achieve a digital aesthetic through hand-painting. What is important or interesting to you about the digital/virtual?RW: I find the digital fascinating for the same reason many others do: the possibilities for the alteration of reality. While the internet was created as a means for the transference and storage of information, there are no real or effective safeguards in place to ensure that any of that information is even remotely factual. So it goes with social media: profiles are tailored to portray a person’s desired image. People can carefully choose the environments and actions in which their posted photos find them. While I don’t believe this revelation will surprise anybody (as the majority of humanity who is online engages in this behavior), I was nonetheless inspired to attempt to recreate this entirely human proclivity in my work.

S/: What is important or interesting about the hand-made or hand-painted?RW: In contrast to my videos, in which many 3 dimensional objects are painstakingly made to evoke the two-dimensional, my paintings serve to bring the 2 dimensional into 3 dimensional spaces. I find the interaction between the digital and the hand-painted fascinating: they are both media that attempt to recreate the visual world (with varying degrees of realism of course). In combining the two, I attempt to recreate that which is already a re-creation of reality.

S/: What does "real" or "reality" mean to you and how does it surface in your work?RW: I believe this to be a truism not only in my own work but in art in general: reality is relative. The different ways in which individuals experience events create our own respective realities. Artists attempt to translate three dimensional images into a two dimensional space, creating a distorted reality comprehended only from a specific vantage point. To understand reality, we must first understand that reality is shaped only by the information given, and almost all information is imperfect. That being said, my work focuses on the distortion of a popular reality, the often agreed upon state of existence that permeates our understanding of the world and humanity.

S/: You make intricate 3-D installations into videos, which you've said also function as paintings in a way. Can you talk more about that, and how you view 3 dimensions and the fourth dimension of time in relation to your work?RW: I treat my videos as paintings in motion. The motion is restricted, often to a single action. The video format forces the viewer into the reality I want them to experience, wherein all of my practical effects line up perfectly to create a sense of depth, existence, change, and action. I don’t necessarily utilize the dimension of time to tell a story or express a narrative, as many videos do, but rather to activate my images.

S:/ What have you been reading/looking at lately?RW: I like dystopian novels and art magazines. I constantly look at contemporary surrealism, surrealist design, and video art.

S/: What projects are you working on now?/ What's next?RW: Currently, I am finishing a major installation that will debut at the Satellite Art Fair in Miami during Basel week. It will consist of a video and a three dimensional set, and is a further execution of the themes I am currently exploring.